Arc Raiders and the Better Angels
The Rattler is a gun that only holds ten rounds, and must be reloaded two rounds at a time. The Ferro is a single-round chambered weapon that must be reloaded each and every time. The hammer must be pulled back each time the Anvil revolver is fired. The Arpeggio is a burst fire weapon where the rounds splay inaccurately after only 50 meters. The Turrento is a dangerous light-machine gun, but takes a long time to spool up, and the Osprey, the only scoped rifle in the game, suffers in its magnification to mere binoculars, which can be crafted with spare parts. It seems in Arc Raiders there’s an inherent insecurity in the design of these guns, as if we do not want to kill.
In contrast, the Arc are merciless killing machines. The Snitches, Wasps, Hornets, and Rocketeers fly in the air, patrol endlessly, continuously replinish, never run out of ammunition. The Pops and Fireballs roll along the ground and spew flames. Turrets can guard key doorways, and fire rounds from massive distances. The Bison leaps onto the player, killing them almost instantly. The Bastion’s rotary guns are lethal within seconds. Queens guard harvesters and are virtually impenetrable, even to a squad.
The intimidating lethality of the world at first makes players skittish. They shoot at everything, they do not know where to go, and in the rain and muck of the swamp, they fire blindly and run perilously because that is what their fathers taught them. Stick up to bullies, the best defense is a good offense, learn how to fire a gun. But as the players become accustomed to the unwieldy movement, to its sliding and climbing and vaulting, and how they run out of breath always and too quickly at that, they come to understand that speaking out, saying something, anything, is the easiest thing in the world. Proximity chat works immediately at a single button press, the player’s voice carries; in the rain, in the dark, along the sand, around the corner. At the press of a button, something even easier than crafting, a lifeline is made.
Arc Raiders contains within its mechanics an attitude of the apocalypse–not as a story of more waste–but an opportunity at dignity before the end. The rapture in Arc Raiders has already occurred; the chosen have gone off into space. We remaining many were not chosen. The analog and dusty aesthetic of the game contains this embarrassing sense of abandonment.
Once a player realizes that death, human death, accomplishes nothing, and once they speak out, Arc Raiders opens itself up as meditations in an emergency. “Can you help me find the tunnels in the spaceport?” “Don’t shoot!” “Wait for me.” “I can hear someone in here, don’t be alarmed.” “No one has to die tonight.” “I’ve got the Bastion distracted, get inside!” Here lies the true power of Arc Raiders. It is the same breakthrough as what longitudinal research discovered is the key to a long and satisfying life, that being the dynamic of hope.
Individuals are fine, but Arc Raiders is best perhaps played in the way John Adams described being a scholar: sober and alone. In groups, the madness of crowds quickly returns, and shooting is the default operating response. The Buried City is a sarcophagus in perpetuity, pushing people and parts into the ground with every shifting step. Its density activates the fight or flight response, people panic, and in that panic, only disaster.
The end of the world is here. It already happened. “Too Late to Awaken” is what Slavoj Zizek called it. But in Arc Raiders, some players see it. Some players know that the power of the voice, of speech, of making contact, of the address, can overwhelm all impediments, and can lead to relationships, rather than violence. Cosmic meaning has been denied us, but terrestrial meaning is still possible. We don’t have to die alone.
