Arc Raiders used to be a much faster game during development—quite literally, as Embark reduced the speed of everything by roughly 60% after it shifted the game towards a PvPvE extraction shooter. It's something you can see pretty clearly in the game's original reveal trailer, where players were leaping around every which way and running at the speed of light, with Dancing on My Own blaring in the background. It's a vibe, for sure, but far from what Arc Raiders is today.
In fact, halfway through the trailer is a shot of a robotic character flying through the air screaming. I'd completely forgotten this scene until we spoke to Embark production director Caio Braga in an interview following his GDC talk, where he confirmed that it was Arc Raiders' old launch pads in action all those years ago.
"We had jump pads for a long time, and when we were running faster than Usain Bolt and using jump pads, the game turned more whimsical." It's very much the tone we see in the original trailer that's so alien to what we have in our hands now that you could convince me that it was a different game altogether. Well, that's technically true.
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"It was one of the things we removed [in the extraction shooter pivot] for two reasons," Bragga said, going on to explain that they wanted players to be more tactical, and that it didn't fit with the new, more grounded tone for the world: "Before, it was much more heroic, and it fit much better."
Naturally, you might be wondering how the Snap Hook fits into this, since this tool lets you zip around and pull off all kinds of wacky stunts—including riding Arcs. It sounds like it would have been a relic from this older version of the game, but "the Snap Hook has been in the game since the beginning."
The difference between it and the jump pads is that the Snap Hook "managed to pivot well" into the slower, methodical gameplay Embark was aiming for after settling on a more immersive extraction shooter.
Braga explains that it used to be more or less unrestricted, and you could fly around "like Spider-Man". In its current form, outside of physics-defying tech players have figured out, the Snap Hook is just intended to reach high ledges faster. Honestly, I can't even begin to imagine what kind of broken movement tech players would have uncovered with the old version of this tool. But alas, it seems like we'll never know.
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