Embark Studios has pulled off a truly impressive feat in making extraction shooters appealing to the masses. 24 hours after release, arc raiders It sits comfortably as the third most wishlisted game on Steam, behind Subnautica 2 and Valve’s own Deadlock. Aside from a more accessible approach to the Extraction genre, making account wipes an option and giving players a path back to a time when they had fun even if they lost all the gear they collected, I think the game’s visual aesthetics and sound design played a big role in those wishlists. Yes, like many other extraction shooters, it’s set in a devastated post-disaster world, but Embark really stands out from the crowd with its flashy inclusion of makeshift raider equipment, striking robot designs, and synth music. But many have noticed the vague reveal of artificial intelligence on Steam, but did AI play a role in Ark Raider’s visual splendor?
“Ark Raiders does not use any generative AI,” design director Virgil Watkins asserted in an interview ahead of the game’s release. “We’re using something called machine learning, or reinforcement learning. It involves moving a large drone with multiple legs, but without any generative content.”
I continued to question whether that was the only reason for AI disclosure on Steam, citing how Embark used a text-to-speech system to create new voice lines in its first multiplayer game, The Finals. Watkins said he wasn’t completely sure because he wasn’t responsible for the storefront page. However, he acknowledges that the same audio line technology exists in Ark Raiders.
“As[you]mentioned,[it’s]the same as The Finale, we’re using that text-to-speech model. So we’re hiring and contracting voice actors for that. It’s part of their contract to use it[AI]for this purpose, and that It allows us to do things like our ping system, where we can say every item name, every location name, and compass direction, so that every time you create a new item in the game, someone won’t have to come and get it.
Interestingly, in an interview with The Game Business earlier this week, Embark CEO Patrick Soderlund mentioned the studio’s use of artificial intelligence. Regarding the original vision for Ark Raiders (which was exclusively a PvE experience before being repurposed into today’s PvPvE game), he says, “The forced loop of the game relied heavily on deep innovation within artificial intelligence, both in reinforcement learning, machine learning, and other aspects. And we thought we could build an entire game around that experience.”
Later in the interview, he talks about how Embark leverages artificial intelligence and procedural generation to speed up development processes such as its “content creation pipeline.”
“If you want to make[development]100 times faster, you basically have to throw away what you know so far and really start thinking about what modifications and changes you need to make to completely change the way you approach it,” Soderlund says. “That’s when we started working on procedurally generated content, using AI and machine learning to some extent in our content creation pipeline as well, and working on what kinds of tools we were building. And we realized that a lot of the tools that we had been working on for a long time were coming from software that was 25 to 30 years old.”
So while there’s no doubt that AI was utilized in the development of Ark Raiders, Watkins is clear that generative AI doesn’t contribute to its impressive visuals. You can read more about our chat with Watkins here. There, we touch on the team’s Dark Souls-style approach to difficulty, what Wipe actually gives you, and more.
With the game’s launch just around the corner, be sure to check out the Ark Raiders system requirements before jumping into the game. Our guides on Ark Raiders hatch keys and the best Ark Raiders builds are also very helpful.
What do you think about the use of generative AI in game development? Let us know on the Discord server.
