Arc Raiders devs waiting for the “right moment” to make Speranza a fully walkable hub

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Virgil Watkins, the design director for Arc Raiders, shared that the team is considering making Speranza, the game’s underground city, a lively social space where players can freely explore and interact with each other.

Arc Raiders takes place in a world where dangerous robots have driven humanity underground into a city called Speranza. This city is now the last bastion of civilization and home to the traders who supply you with the equipment needed to venture back to the surface.

After a run, instead of a welcoming hub, players are presented with a series of menus set against a busy city backdrop. Many have expressed disappointment with this, hoping it could have been a true social area, similar to The Tower in Destiny 2.

The game’s design director says that Embark Studios has seriously considered this feature, and it’s possible we could see it added sometime down the line.

Arc Raiders devs open to making Destiny 2-style social hub

Virgil Watkins told PCGamesN they discussed how players would experience the game very early in development. He said the team immediately started thinking about it as they began building the game’s interface, but ultimately, the decision came down to how much time and effort they could realistically dedicate to it.

He explained that they chose to use a menu system because it efficiently lets players manage their items, create character builds, and find traders. They felt their development time and resources were better focused on improving other aspects of the game.

While not currently planned, the team is interested in adding a central social space similar to the one in Destiny, according to Watkins. They want to carefully consider how to best combine a sense of deep involvement in the game with easy access to features and other players.

I really like the feel of a central, walkable area, but it’s important to keep ordering food easy and fast. Right now, it takes too much running back and forth between Celeste, my room, and Shani just to get everything I need.

We’ve definitely talked about adding that feature, and the team is very interested. It really comes down to finding the right time to introduce it and make sure it feels right for our players.

This doesn’t guarantee we’ll be exploring Speranza on foot anytime soon, but the developers haven’t dismissed the possibility either.

So, right now it looks like the devs are concentrating on things we’ll see pretty soon – like letting us create custom loadouts to speed up getting into matches, and tweaking those super-rare weapons to make them feel more balanced. It’s good to see them tackling those quality-of-life improvements and balancing issues first!

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2026-01-19 19:19