Arc Raiders won't have CoD-style "T-Rex costumes" and "Santa Claus outfits" because Embark wants to "protect" its visual identity

Embark Studios already flexed its creative muscles in The Finals, one of the most vibrant, flashy multiplayer games I've ever played. In every aspect of its aesthetic, it nailed the glitzy fanfare a cheesy gameshow should. It also features some outrageous skins - the kind that would look out of place in most shooters, but fit the zany tone of The Finals well. With Arc Raiders, Embark's at it again, managing to somehow make a post-disaster extraction shooter look… stylish? However, given that setting, it'll surely have to constrain itself in the cosmetics department a little more - a pink bunny suit or a gundam costume may be fine in The Finals, but it wouldn't wash with me if it ended up in Arc Raiders. We've seen Call of Duty and Battlefield fans get pretty vocal about wacky skins and random crossovers, so I asked Embark how it's going to avoid similar criticisms while still delivering appealing cosmetics.

I've already shared what Arc Raiders' design director, Virgil Watkins, had to say on finding the sweet spot with difficulty and Embark's use of artificial intelligence during development. Thankfully, according to him, generative AI hasn't played a role in designing the visual and audio elements that have impressed me so much.

The raider suits feel grounded but can still be considered fashion statements. The Arc bots look and sound imposing - it's a difficult task to make a compelling robot enemy these days, seeing as we've encountered so many in the past, but Embark's managed it. The audio design across the board is excellent, as are the synthy tracks that grace its trailers and menus.

But as we've seen in recent months, fans are sick of multiplayer games abandoning their aesthetic vision to flog ridiculous character and weapon skins, or out-of-place collabs. While Watkins concedes this is more the realm of Embark's creative director and art team, he tells me that Arc Raiders isn't going to go down the same path.

"What I believe to be true is that we will maintain the current aesthetic that we have," he tells me. "It will fit within our sensibilities of how these things look and fit within the world and inside the fiction." While Embark wants to give "as much freedom as possible for players to express themselves," it has to be done within the scope of the game.

"I think it was said a little while ago in a meeting [that] we would never, say, make a Santa Claus outfit," he recalls, "but we may make something that is of our own tone and our own aesthetic that evokes a Santa Claus. That's not even a statement that we will have a Santa Claus outfit, but I think that's kind of the line you can draw. We're pretty protective of making sure that anything that goes into the game fits within the visual identity, fits within the tone, fits within the setting.

"I think because so much of our game is strong around that element, it would be really unfortunate to upset that by injecting, I don't know, a T-Rex costume running around suddenly - I don't think the novelty is worth the trade."

I have to say, that's music to my ears. I know there's an audience out there that would throw a few bucks at Embark so they could become Raidersaurus (or whatever terrible name it'd end up being called), but as Watkins says, it's just not worth the disappointment that would bring to those that are really invested in the game and its world.

Arc Raiders is out now, and as I write this, over 200,000 people are playing it on Steam alone. It's a remarkable feat for an extraction shooter, and I'm confident the aesthetic of the game has played a huge part in making it appeal to a wider audience than I ever anticipated it would reach.

If you're dropping in, make sure you go armed with some of our handy guides. We've got recommendations on the best Arc Raider builds for those early runs, and a rundown of what Arc Raiders Hatch Keys can do for you.

Let us know your thoughts on Arc Raiders over in our Discord server - I'd love to hear how you find it over the next few days.