Arc Raiders looks great: My pals at PC Gamer think it's the most exciting thing to happen to the extraction genre in a long time, and the huge numbers the server slam playtest is putting up at this very moment prove that they're not alone in thinking so. For me, though, there's just one problem: It's a third-person shooter, and I don't like third-person shooters.
That leads me to a second problem: The odds of Arc Raiders ever getting a first-person mode are basically zero.
That little spot of disappointment comes from Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins, who told PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde in a recent interview that the game was built around the third-person perspective, and that shifting to a first-person view doesn't "give us a benefit of any sort."
"I think so much of our immersion and world and the interactions that your character has with the things in the world, the enemies, the other players, is so amplified by the quality that's come from our animation team and our audio team and our environment team, that it works together as this very nice package that you can really place your character in that world," Watkins said.
"That's not to say that's not possible in first person, but [third person] did work so well for us that we never even really looked at first person. And I know there are hybrid models, like Helldivers 2 and a few other games, but I think for us to try to do that, it would cause us to have to re-evaluate so much of how our areas are built and the way they're laid out, because you get very specific sight lines once you go first person."
There are technical considerations as well: Watkins said there are concerns with the game's geometry and quality of assets that would also have to be addressed, because everything in Arc Raiders is meant to be seen from the distance of an over-the-shoulder view: "Once you start being able to put your face right up against an asset, it kind of falls apart."
The net result is that it is "very, very implausible" that Embark will ever add a first-person perspective, Watkins said—although he gets why people would ask for one.
Similarly, even though I don't care for third-person shooters, I get why Embark would want to stick with it. I find the perspective awkward and difficult to aim with—my eye follows the gun and I end up blasting a lot of holes into floors—and not nearly as immersive as an FPS, but I also acknowledge that it can deliver a more "cinematic" experience, which I figure has to be at least partly why I'm such a fan of Max Payne.
And hey, Arc Raiders isn't the first game to disappoint me like this: Some time ago I very politely suggested that it would be nice to have a first-person perspective in The Forever Winter, another third-person extraction shooter that is by all reports very good, and I was very politely told, "no."
