TIME TO KILL

Seven years ago a team of Battlefield veterans left EA io create their dream project. Now Embark's ARC Raiders is ready to touch down – and go head to head with Battlefield 6

- ALEX SPENCER

After the ARC Raiders tech test ended in April, something unusual happened.

Despite knowing the game's temporary servers were closed, we couldn't quite bring ourselves to delete the shortcut from our PC's desktop. As a matter of fact, from time to time, we'd still click on it, trying to boot the vanished demo in the futile hope of another quick game.

The fact that ARC Raiders managed to work its way into our brain like this reflects the pedigree and history of its developer. Embark Studios' founders splintered off from EA DICE at the tailend of Battlefield's golden era. The studio's debut release, The Finals, was an inventive, technologically outstanding variation on the team deathmatch shooter, though it was actually conceived after the original design meetings for ARC Raiders, becoming a credible companion project while development of Raiders reached full power. While other multiplayer FPS games have struggled to find an audience, The Finals is still going strong 18 months after launch, attracting tens of thousands of players per day. And there are signs that ARC Raiders will be similarly successful.

Reception to that April tech test was almost unanimously positive. At the time of writing, some eight weeks before ARC Raiders goes fully live, it's the seventh most-wanted game on Steam - just two places behind Battlefield 6. EA's gigantic military shooter is out on October 10. ARC Raiders will follow, on October 30. Considering this is only Embark's second game and, technically speaking, its first, since it was planned before The Finals the fact that the studio is already within striking distance of its team's former paymaster becomes even more impressive.