Playing ARC Raiders: Frozen Trail ahead of today’s release really hammered one thing home for me: I quite like PvE in an extraction shooter. That’s not going to be for everyone, of course, and that thrill of the unknown high stakes when exploring, fighting and extracting in ARC Raiders catapulted it to success last autumn… But with a gentle-journo’s agreement to hold fire and collaborate in the Frozen Trail preview? That’s much more my jam.
So it’s great, from my perspective, to see Embark Studios announcing the PvE playtest coming next week. Catering to this audience will naturally put different demands on the team in the long run, but I’m curious to see how this aspect can grow and develop, harking back to that original announcement and pitch for the game.
But that’s not, strictly speaking, what I actually played and explored during this preview (even if it was the effective end result). No, this was really about all the new stuff that has now arrived with today’s main Frozen Trail update. It’s the first major update in around half a year, and its release is coinciding with a free-play week for all and sundry to check out the game for free.
At the heart of the update is Pendola Pass, a brand new map set further north than any of the previous maps, bringing a snowy, wintry climate with it. So chilly, in fact, that a Flash Freeze weather effect will randomly occur, forcing you to seek shelter and get out of the cold if you value, not only your fingers and toes, but your life (and loot).
There’s a town and industrial centre up in Pendola Pass, but that’s not the first thing you’ll really notice. No, that would be the giant broken down ARC Emperor, which provides Speranza and its army of Raiders a grand opportunity for salvage. In response, the ARC has sent a giant Frigate airship to salvage the area.
That, unfortunately, was outside of what we got to see, promising endgame challenges and shifting puzzles from effort to effort. What we did run into were the shifty little Skulker bots, which scoot around like an angry possessed briefcase, and then open up to take pot shots at you with a rifle. On their own, they’re fine to deal with quite quickly, but in twos and threes, they’re able to evade and attack again from unexpected angles.
Much more obviously dangerous is the Bully, an imposing quadrupedal bot designed using ML techniques to figure out its animation and traversal. It’s a beast, stomping around, able to come at you with real speed, and with heavy armour and weapons that make it tough to take down. You’ll definitely want to coordinate against them.
Helping to tackle these new threats, you have both a batch of new weapons and some new gadgets to use. Do you like ropes? Because all of the new tools are all about ropes and tethers. For your own mobility, a hand-thrown grapple hook lets you attach to lamposts, rooftops, and other scenery and swing through the air or rappel up and down. It’s neat, but the range is relatively limited, so being able to swing around like Spider-Man will take some real skill.
The Tether Launcher just needs some accurate aim, a gun that can shoot and attach two points together, so you can stop an ARC in its tracks or flight path and make it much easier to shoot or run away from. Very satisfying, in that Horizon: Zero Dawn kind of way. The Yank Grenade (which I didn’t manage to try) takes that a step further and will just grab an enemy and violently drag it to wherever it landed.
There’s a couple of new guns – the Stiletto battle rifle and the Bantam snub nose revolver – but really, the Weapon Amplification system will be the main draw here, taking existing guns and augmenting them with ARC components. I was somewhat indifferent to the Venator being turned into a full-auto pistol – I swapped to the Bantam in this preview loadout for a bit more stopping power – but there was a scoped rifle which was rather fun to use on ARCs kept at a safe distance.
In some situations, the Redirection condition will be applied – exclusive to Pendola Pass – as a further way to deal with the ARC threats that are out there. There’s various parts of the Emperor which can be opened, a beacon pulled out and then deployed somewhere else, in relative safety, to call down a Harvester Payload. You’ll probably want to keep your distance, because not only does this hammer down with a concerted meteor storm, but that will obviously alert and draw other players to your location.
It’s a similar situation with extraction, as Pendola Pass has a unique extraction pod that needs to be called in. It then parachutes down somewhere nearby, and will rocket out of there a couple minutes later, whether you’re inside or not. There’s just space for three players inside, but apparently you should be able to grapple onto the side of it to hitch a ride as a desperate measure.
With just a couple of focused hours of play and a focus on seeing a few key aspects, there’s still a lot of Frozen Trail that remains a bit of a mystery. There’s plenty of depths to Pendola Pass to explore, rewards to be extracted from the fallen Emperor and Frigate alike. There’s also the wider breadth of the Weapon Amplification to work towards, and the player’s own Outpost to set up and customise. Oh, and if you find a few friendly folks, you can all pull out your banjos and cameras for a more sociable time.
But I’m personally more intrigued by how the game will feel and flow with a dedicated PvE mode. Something to look forward to next week.
