Just assume games are delayed until they're not.
I try not to get too excited about games that I know next to nothing about, but there's one shooter that has lived rent-free in my brain since it was announced last year: Arc Raiders, the space-age co-op shooter from Embark Studios, a new studio led by ex-EA boss Patrick Söderlund and several ex-DICE folks. I loved the attitude of its reveal trailer and saw a lot of promise in its mobility and robot designs. The trailer is so good that I've probably watched it eight times in 2022.
I was looking forward to blasting apart massive battlebots with friends this year, but as a personal attack on me, Embark announced today that Arc Raiders has been delayed into 2023.
An update from the team: pic.twitter.com/0J3imUtZP4August 8, 2022
"Arc Raiders is an ambitious game, and we will be using this extra time to expand the experience, and allow it to reach its fullest potential," the announcement reads. "We will be diving into more details as soon as we start to test the game more extensively with players."
I blame myself for not seeing the writing on the wall. We're in August, and this is the first news shared about the game since December 2021. Games are getting delayed now more than ever, so I should have expected as much from Arc Raiders. If Starfield couldn't even keep to its novelty release date of 11/22/22, truly no game is safe.
The good news is that Embark still appears to be taking signups for future Arc Raiders playtests. Hopefully we'll start to hear more about the basic details of it early next year, such as what sort of game Arc Raiders really is. We know it's primarily PvE co-op, but is it mission-based, or set in an open world? Maybe if I keep obsessively watching last year's trailer the answer will come to me.
